The "NOT" candidate

From American Thinker:

Herman Cain shocked the GOP world on Saturday by winning the Florida straw poll, garnering 37% of the vote.

Rick Perry, whose debate performances have come under fire in the last 72 hours finished a distant second with 15%. Mitt Romney got 14% for third place.

[. . .]

Is Cain now the "Anybody but Romney" candidate? There were apparently a lot of Perry voters who switched to Cain on the fly. But do they think the Georgia businessman can win?

Put simply, if Barack Obama can win then just about anybody not currently serving time for child molestation ought to be able to win. 

Or perhaps Obama is the Harriet Miers of presidential politics.   Remember when Bush nominated Miers a number of commentators noted that the nomination of a mediocre and generally unqualified candidate for the high court was hardly unknown.  However the outcry over Ms. Miers essentially raised the bar on the quality of Supreme Court nominees. . .

I just remembered Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.  

Never mind.  

Back to the current presidential race.

Both Romney and Obama have to be worried in that the Republican primary voters are looking for an "anyone but Romney" candidate to vote for and voters nationally are looking for an "anyone but Obama" to vote for.  

This leaves the GOP in a position which it has not been in since 1980.  Pretty much anybody we nominate is going to win.  So why not forget about "playing it safe" and nominating a candidate that the mainstream media tells us is electable (you know someone like Gerald Ford, Bob Dole or John McCain) and nominate someone like Ronald Reagan.

Many people, especially Democrats, the mainstream media (sorry, redundant) and establishment Republicans considered Reagan to be a lightweight (just an Hollywood actor) and a dangerous lunatic for wanting to confront the Soviet Union.  Yet when he got the nomination he won an easy victory over Jimmy Carter because Carter was just so damn incompetent that people were willing to vote for "anybody but Jimmah" 

My choice for the Reagan of the 21st century would be Sarah Palin but she isn't the only one who fills the Not Obama, Not Romney - and the increasingly attractive Not Perry - description.  Cain might just do, as the Florida voters seem to think.